“Any news, Mr. Parsons?” he asked impersonally.
“Some!” admitted Nem, and saw a darting flame in those dark eyes.
“What news?”
“That Rose Miller read Swinburne.”
Sutton’s poise was perfect. Nem knew from that instant the full strength of the man he was dealing with.
“Scarcely news, Mr. Parsons, to me at least. The child was ambitious, wanted to cultivate her mind. I helped her. I gave her my own copy of Swinburne, in fact.”
Nem sauntered further into the tool house, closer to Sutton, who still stood beside the tool cabinet.
“Reckon I don’t know much about poetry, Mr. Sutton, but I’d hardly say Swinburne was the sort of lit’ry food for a young, uneducated girl.”
Sutton’s dark pallor was suffused with color.
“She had understanding—” and he snapped his teeth shut over the rest of his speech.
Nem loomed even closer.
“And she had a very decent burial, Mr. Sutton. Doesn’t it strike you as queer that Ellen Clarke, hatin’ her as she did, would have laid crocuses in her hands, covered her dead, pretty face with sackcloth to keep the garden mold from her blue eyes, her yellow hair—”
“What the devil are you getting at?” gritted Sutton.
“Just tryin’ to figure things out,” Nem said softly. “No, Mr. Sutton — the one who buried little Rose Miller was mighty fond of her — or had been.”
Sutton stared at him with a sort of tragic hostility.
“And — who was it?”
Nem parried.
“Ellen Clarke wouldn’t have dragged those denim overalls on over her skirts, either; and she’d have been in too much of a hurry to change.”
“What makes you think they were used?”
“Little flecks of burlap lint, bits of fresh loam, in spite of your brushing. After you’d filled the grave, Mr. Sutton, you carted the sackcloth back to the tool shed, and got the lint on your overalls doing it.”
“You accuse me of Rose Miller’s murder?”
The man’s face was a mask, not good to look upon.
Nem loomed past him, forestalled his sudden protective motion toward the tool cabinet, jerked open the little wooden door and found the trifle he sought: a withered scrap of green and yellow bloom.
“I accuse you of loving Rose Miller; of taking all she had to give, that you were starved for; of bringin’ her to her death — and laying her in her grave — the grave you tried to make decent with sackcloth — and a handful of early flowers. These!”
Nem unfolded his thick fingers upon the ruined crocuses, round eyes fixed upon the unhappy man.
“Arrest me, then,” said Sutton drearily.
But Nem turned to the door.
“You might better act as if you were innocent, for your own sake, professor. Think it over for a spell.”
When Sutton’s tragic face lifted from his hands the detective was gone.
V
Nem Parsons did not pause long in the pleasant blue and white kitchen of the bungalow.
The housekeeper was washing dishes at the sink, and looked up dourly at Nem’s unheralded entry. She straightened, shook her powerful hands free of the soapy water.
“What do you keep pesterin’ me for? Why don’t you go and find out who killed the girl?” she demanded, voice cracking from sheer nervousness.
“Didn’t come to see you, Miss Clarke,” Nem reassured her. “I’d like to see your mistress, Mrs. Sutton. Where is she? In her room?”
A look of intense relief relaxed Ellen Clarke’s sullen features.
“Yes,” she said shortly, and turned back to her work.
Nem passed on through the pleasant hall, bright and vivid again with the lowering sun, his soft shoes making the merest squeak. The door of Mrs. Sutton’s room was open. The invalid herself was there, sitting in her wheel-chair between the two sunny windows. The book she had been reading slid from her thin hands as Nem’s elephantine bulk filled the doorway.
She turned her chair with a deft twist of one hand so that she faced him more squarely, so that the sun streamed in more directly over her shoulders, cast a shining auriole upon her smooth chestnut head, enriched the splendid garnet dressing gown she habitually wore.
“Oh, Mr. Parsons, have you come with news, or to ask more questions?” she wanted to know. Her pale sad mouth smiled mechanically, but her gray eyes, in their hollows, were anything but gay.
Nem cautiously seated himself.
“There’s quite a few things I’d like to know still,” he admitted, apologetically.
She leaned back against her pillows.
“I hope I can help you. I feel so sure that poor Ellen Clarke had nothing to do with Rose’s death—”
Nem shook his enormous head.
“You’re right there, Mis’ Sutton; Ellen Clarke is innocent.”
“Oh.” She caught her breath a trifle. “Then — who could have done it?”
Nem’s childlike eyes were not fixed on Alice Sutton’s face, but on her thin, drooping left shoulder and its covering of patterned silk.
“I reckon I’ll be able to tell you that soon. First off, I want to ask you a question. Did you know of your husband’s friendship for Rose Miller?”
The woman’s graceful, death-white hands tightened upon the arms of her chair, but her face remained immobile.
“Yes. I suppose you’d call it that. We both liked her — were willing to do much for her.”
“What, for example?” Nem urged.
She bit her thin lip.
“Why — consideration, time off, good wages — what a strange question?”
She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue as if she were suddenly athirst. Nem’s bland blue eyes met hers now.
“I think you know what I mean.”
He saw the pulse in her thin throat quicken its beat; her light breath raced unevenly between the pale, parted lips, and he was all solicitude.
“You don’t feel well, do you, Mis’ Sutton? Can I get you something? A glass of water from the kitchen?”
She shut her eyes wearily, as if she craved respite of any sort.
“Yes, please. Do you mind?”
Nem got the water from the housekeeper and took it back to the invalid’s room. Mrs. Sutton roused herself from her lethargy at his reentry, thanked him with a wan smile. Nem stepped close beside her, to help her drink; then awkwardly, inadvertently, as he held the glass for her, he spilled a few drops from the overfull glass upon her shoulder.
All contrition, he waited until she had drained the cold draft, handed back the glass. Then he took his handkerchief and clumsily mopped at the damp spot.
“I’m the awkwardest old cuss that ever wore shoe leather,” he apologized.
“It was nothing,” she brushed aside his regretful words. “I feel better now. What else have you to ask?”
But Nem did not heed her question. He had finished wiping up the water he had spilled. Now he held his broad white handkerchief up to the light. A large stain of lightish red was visible upon it.
Alice Sutton’s deep-set eyes followed Nem’s.
“What’s — that?” she asked.
Nem looked at her pitifully.
“Blood, Mis’ Sutton. Rose Miller’s blood. I saw the dark, stiff stain on your dressing gown in the sun here. It wouldn’t show up anywhere else. Then I moistened it—”
He had to admire her audacity. She laughed a little, though her lips were ashen.
“But the garnet dye—”
“That robe is made of fast dyed silk; ’twouldn’t even run in the wash, I reckon. The stain that came off is blood. I’m sorrier than I can say, but I’ve jest naturally got to hold you for the murder of Rose Miller. Your husband buried her, to protect you; but you killed her, while he was out; while she was getting you ready for bed. She bent over you, and you stabbed her with an upward thrust of that sharp little paring knife—”